My Experience and Qualifications

Before starting my private practice, I spent the better part of two decades working in various areas of the healthcare, NPO and academic sectors. My positions involved coaching, counselling, consulting, strategic leadership, and training and development at various organisational levels.

Supporting people to grow and develop has been a long-standing passion of mine and as such, my research has  focused primarily on investigating ways to support people [primarlily health & care professionals] to do just that. My research includes:

• A Masters degree in palliative care where I investigated the development needs of patient care managers working in hospices in Kenya, Malawi and South Africa.
• A PhD, in Psychology titled: Attentive Amelioration: Developing and Evaluating an Applied Mindfulness Programme for Psychologists. This research involved the design, development and evaluation of a mindfulness-based, blended coaching and e-learning programme for healthcare practitioners and has established a holistic and person-centred approach to address stress and burnout in healthcare professionals.

My current practice approach is very much evidenced-based and applies principles and findings related to the above research, and the plethora of research regarding positive psychology, mindfulness and adult learning.

My qualifications include a BCur [Psychiatry, Midwifery, Community and General Nursing] degree, an Honours in Psychology, a Post-Graduate Management qualification, the above mentioned MPhil and PhD as well as various short trainings related to counselling and coaching and other healthcare related topics.

 My Approach

My practice approach is borne of my varied and a-typical educational trajectory and my working experience. What does that mean? Well first and foremost, my approach is person-centred. This is a direct influence of my palliative care training and my work in the hospice environment. Hospice work really teaches one to centralise the patient as expert in their own life and to decentralise the professional. It is an environment where the idea of an inter- and/or transdisciplinary approach comes into its own and professionals are required to drop the traditional hierarchical medical model to work in a way that is holistic and truly patient-centred.

This has carried over into my private practice in that I situate every client as the expert in their own lives, and see my role as a collaborative and facilitative one. Together we create a mindful space to explore unconscious patterns that may be blocking progress and causing suffering with the view to identify and cultivate resources for a healthier, more engaged, more compassionate and more fulfilling way of being. This approach is based on mindfulness research and practices, and I weave the principles and practices of Hakomi, positive psychology, and adult learning into my work.

In addition, my approach is based on the vast and growing body of research that has found that much of our everyday suffering is unnecessary and is produced by unconscious beliefs and patterns that are irrelevant, untrue or out of date. Mindfulness-based therapy is designed to bring these limiting or inaccurate ideas into conscious awareness through a process of assisted self-study and self-discovery. This approach is not about talking about your problems or about your history. This is not to say we don’t address these; we do, because they are expressed in the way you do things now – in your habits, your style, your behavioural characteristics, and in how you’re experiencing this moment. Through a collaborative facilitation process, we will pay attention to what is arising in the session and bring mindful awareness to your beliefs, memories, habits, emotions and behaviours associated with that experience. Once you are conscious of these, you can examine them and have some choice about changing them into ones that allow for more satisfying ways of living and being in relationship.